What a load of rubbish! The efficacy of theory of planned behaviour and norm activation model in predicting visitors’ binning behaviour in national parks

Authors

Kourosh Esfandiar, Edith Cowan UniversityFollow
Ross Dowling, Edith Cowan UniversityFollow
Joanna Pearce, Edith Cowan UniversityFollow
Edmund Goh, Edith Cowan UniversityFollow

Document Type

Journal Article

Publication Title

Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Management

Volume

46

First Page

304

Last Page

315

Publisher

Elsevier

School

School of Business and Law

RAS ID

32914

Comments

This is an Authors Accepted Manuscript version of an article published by Elsevier in JOURNAL OF HOSPITALITY AND TOURISM MANAGEMENT. The published version is available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhtm.2021.01.001

Esfandiar, K., Dowling, R., Pearce, J., & Goh, E. (2021). What a load of rubbish! The efficacy of theory of planned behaviour and norm activation model in predicting visitors’ binning behaviour in national parks. Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Management, 46, 304-315. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhtm.2021.01.001

Abstract

© 2021 The Authors A specific concern for many park managers is the generation of waste by visitors. One way to combat this issue in national parks is to encourage visitors to put their litter in a bin. This study investigates binning behaviour, as a type of pro-environmental behaviour, of visitors to Yanchep National Park, Australia. Using structural equation modelling, this study tested an integrated structural model combining the theory of planned behaviour and the norm-activation model with data from 219 visitors to this park. The study tried to move away from measuring visitors' pro-environmental intention and instead gathered data based on their current behaviour (i.e. visitors' on-site binning behaviour). The results revealed a good fit of the survey data to the model which explained 55.9% of the variance in binning behaviour. Furthermore, the finding has demonstrated the efficacy of combining the norm activation model with the theory of planned behaviour in explaining visitors' binning behaviour. This highlighted the role of personal norms as the key driver of binning behaviour among visitors to Yanchep National Park. Therefore, park administrators should strengthen and activate visitors’ salient personal norms. Findings of this study assist in better understanding how park administrators can promote binning behaviour based on an effective framework.

DOI

10.1016/j.jhtm.2021.01.001

Related Publications

Esfandiar, K. (2020). Understanding pro-environmental binning behaviour of National Park visitors: A cross-cultural study. https://ro.ecu.edu.au/theses/2388

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.